“In 1979, after the devastation of a decade under the tyrannical President Macias, then-Lieutenant Colonel Obiang took control of the government and was named President of the Supreme Military Council.”

What did Obiang do while working under Macias’ orders to stop the decade old devastation?

“In 1969 –the official history continues – Obiang becomes the National Guard Liuetenant, with all the forces and military quarters based in Malabo under his control.”

He became commander in chief of the Armed Forces in 1975, and “in 1979 a presidential decree made him vice-minister of the Popular Armed Forces.”

What did Obiang do in these 30 years to avoid another dictatorship?

In 1982, “Obiang became President of the Republic for an initial seven-year term. He was re-elected to additional terms in 1989, 1996 and 2003. (…) President Obiang won re-election once again in 1996. Infrastructure and housing is now being rebuilt more quickly as new water, sewage and drainage are being installed and hundreds of miles of new roadways are being built to connect all of Equatorial Guinea’s cities and towns. Healthcare and education also top the agenda as new, modern state-of-art hospitals and clinics are being built and staffed and teachers are being trained to better teach students.”

Buried under this mountain of promises about public works, lies one certain fact: Obiang wins election after election with more than 95% of the votes. In the 2002 presidential elections he got 97%, in the 2004 legislative and local elections he won 98 out of the 100 parliament seats plus 237 out of the 244 country’s municipalities. In the 2008 legislative elections he got 99 seats.

The main difference between the deposed president and the current one, is that Obiang knows how to read the signs of the times and to adapt himself accordingly. This has allowed him to hold on to power for thirty years, count on foreign support and enrich himself enormously thanks to the oil industry, also under his control.

The past thirty years can indeed be described as golden thirty years for Obiang, but not for the great majority of Equatorial Guinea’s inhabitants. Country reports published by the World Bank, the European Union and some of the United Nations agencies, let alone those by non governmental organisations, especially those devoted to human rights and human development, present a quite different reality.

Obiang is willing to play the democratic game in front of the international community, because in each game he marks the cards and keeps the best while deals the rest.

If appearances have to be kept up of regular elections, of honouring international treaties, of adhering to foreign initiatives on transparency, accountability and good governance, for Obiang this is no problem. He lets the opposition win a parliamentary seat, he signs international treaties only to honour them in the breach, and varnishes his masterwork with glowing propaganda about the government’s good works.

Obiang has many good friends who just happen to govern powerful countries. These convince public opinion that Obiang’s scam is legitimate and only needs a few tweaks and minor improvements. To that end, they offer technical assistance and cooperation, while making clear there is no great urgency. Since oil production started in Equatorial Guinea in the mid 90s, his friends have become even more reliable than ever, despite knowing the reality all too well:

The 2004 Department of State report on Equatorial Guinea accurately summarised its political situation: “Citizens did not have the ability to change their government peacefully.”

In 2009 the Department refers to the country as a “nominally multi-party Republic with strong domination by the executive branch.”

For his part, Obiang thinks it wise to take preventive measures. He sends soldiers and policemen to assassinate, kidnap and torture his “enemies”, and in general to make life difficult for political opponents.

In spite of this and of the fact that there is no shortage of people willing to get their share of the enormous oil cake in exchange for loyalty, some still remain who do not give up. Some of these string along with Obiang’s pretense of democracy. Others prefer to try and oust him.

Considering their actions so far, it can safely be said that Obiang has clearly defeated them all. He intimidates, persecutes and entertains members of the first group, according to his whims. He attacks members of the second whenever he can. These have managed to discomfit him once, but Obiang’s friends and luck have been on his side.

Neither group of the opposition can claim that their respective strategies have come anywhere close to achieving their goals. The reverse is true, as chances of success seem to be inversely proportional to the increase in their actions.

Playing Obiang’s democracy game is not an easy task. If a player does not perform as expected, other players will not take them seriously. Equatorial Guinea’s leader of the parliamentary opposition declares again and again to the international community, to the media, to various international political institutions, that his party plays by Obiang’s rules and also reassures the world that his party will only use non-violent means to achieve power.

But if the international community does not demand that Obiang play by internationally accepted rules to stay in power, why does the opposition think they have to do so? It seems the international community accepts opposition to Obiang as long as its leaders give up their people’s right to resist the Obiang regime’s human rights violations.

Philosophers dealt with the problem of using legitimate violence against an aggression many centuries ago. Since the 13th century it is accepted that “in the case of a deadly attack, there is more obligation to protect one’s own life than the attacker’s.”

If a political party which opposes a never ending dictatorship renounces legitimate defence against its violence, it is delegitimizing itself, because it actually helps the dictatorship it claims to oppose. When this party seeks support from international actors, despite their party’s poor record of resistance and even knowing full well their petition will be met with indifference, they are digging their own political grave.

It is true that a legitimate defence requires another condition, namely that there are reasonable chances of success. In this respect it has to be noted that it is all about not giving up the right to legitimate resistance. Further, there can be no likelihood of success if the possibility of resistance is totally abandoned.

The non-parliamentary opposition, made up of several small groups, has not renounced political violence. But its failure, too, is obvious and due mainly to lack of popular, militant support, to splits and internecine fighting and other shortcomings.

The option of a coup d’état has not yielded useful results. Nor is there much chance that it will. The lack of a popular militia and bad planning, along with the use of foreign mercenaries, explain the failure. Day after day, Obiang increases his own security, and he can count on foreign support. It seems that only a palace coup, like the one Obiang himself authored 30 years ago, is likely to succeed.

It can be said that the opposition too, like Obiang, have placed their hopes in foreign hands. The difference between the two camps is that European and North American Presidents and Prime Ministers prefer oil in their own countries to ensuring human rights in Equatorial Guinea.

The struggle carried out by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is illuminating. The oil plunder plus the damages it causes to the Delta physical conditions and to its inhabitants’ health, together with the government’s repression, are the reasons the MEND mentions to explain its attacks against the interests of the foreign companies that benefit from the oil industry with the consent of the government.

What is taking place in Nigeria, taking into account its much bigger size, is similar to what happens in Equatorial Guinea: “Since 1970, $350 billion in oil revenue has flowed to Nigeria, yet 75% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. (…) Nigerian governments have negotiated joint ventures with multinational companies for unregulated oil production since 1958. Over 50 years of exploitation in the Niger Delta has resulted in systematic human rights abuses and environmental devastation.”

Against this the MEND has declared its aims: reparations for environmental damage and also control of the Delta’s natural riches. It has also made public its means: “Leave our land while you can or die in it. Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.”

In recent years, its achievements have been made known. The government, heeding a request by the big oil companies, sent the army to violently repress the Delta people protests, which resulted in thousands of dead, tortured and prisoners.

Popular resistance, however, kept up the struggle and the MEND was created. It has forced cuts in oil production from almost two and half million barrels per day to less than one and a half.

Unlike what is taking place in Equatorial Guinea, the Nigerian government does not despise the MEND. This is not a gift from the government –it maintains its military actions against the guerrillas- but the MEND, through its resistance, has placed itself in a position that deserves its enemy’s respect. Nowadays, both camps are holding conversations.

Meanwhile, Obiang represses the opposition parties that he so despises. At the same time, the only opposition leader with a seat in parliament, made public a communiqué after the attack against the president’s palace in Malabo that took place last February, the 17th, 2009, which was disingenuously attributed to the MEND by the government.

The party “congratulates the State Security and Armed Forces for their quick and efficient response and declares its support and solidarity with them.” It also reiterates once again “that (the party) rejects all movements aimed to achieve power through violence.”

While the Equatorial Guinea parliament unanimously declares the MEND “a terrorist group made up of mercenaries with evil intentions and recommends maximum repression,” Nigeria president has offer the MEND an amnesty. This offer is supported by many, including Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka.

Equatorial Guinea politicians, both in power and in opposition, might do well to pay attention to what Soyinka’s said about Nigerian politicians: “In tandem with his predecessor Olusegun, President Umaru Yar’Adua must be made to recognize that he shoulders a moral and political responsibility for failure to make a decisive breakthrough in the quest to terminate hostilities in the Delta region. Much of the toll of death and destruction could, and would have been avoided if only these two rulers had lived up to their charge.

These words, of course, are also relevant to those in Europe and North America who “accompany Obiang in his efforts to improve democracy in Equatorial Guinea” and to those who claim to support the opposition camp in its political activity.

The human rights organization Amnesty International describes incarceration in the prison as “a slow, lingering death sentence”. One political campaigner from the country, released in 2006 said bluntly. “Prisoners are tortured and just disappear and die. They weight their bodies with rocks and throw them in the sea. Their families never know what happened to them.”

Equatorial Guinea is run by the iron-fist of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power in a coup in 1979. Human rights groups say Mr Obiang’s corrupt regime is one of the worst abusers of rights in Africa. His reputation is fierce and he is said to enjoy eating the brains and testicles of his political opponents.

This gruesome fate is unlikely to meet Black Beach’s most famous current inmate, the British mercenary Simon Mann, who had admitted to being central to an international plot in 2004 to overthrow the government of this oil-rich state. In his show trial this week, Mann pleaded guilty to being a member of a coup attempt to replace Mr Obiang with Severo Moto, an exiled opposition leader living in Spain.

It was back in March 2004 that Mann and 69 South African mercenaries were arrested at Harare airport with a plane load of arms en route to Equatorial Guinea. Mann, who is a soldier of fortune, was educated at Britain’s top private school, Eton and later joined the country’s most elite regiment, the SAS. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in Zimbabwe, which was subsequently reduced to four, although he was then transferred to Black Beach earlier this year.

The bespectacled Mann has consistently tried to underplay his importance in the coup with a view of getting a reduced sentence. His friends try and portray him as an “English gentleman”. One profile of Mann on the BBC last week, included the quote calling him a “humane man, but an adventurer… very English, a romantic, tremendously good company”.

Even his defence lawyer claimed last week that a “gentleman” who had collaborated with the court “out of a sincere desire to repair the damage done to our people”. But this “English gentleman” has also managed to get privileged treatment at prison, having his own his own cell, an exercise machine, books and magazines. He is allowed to make regular calls home and is said to lunch most days with the country’s Minister of Security, with special food and wine delivered to the prison.

The simple fact is that Mann collaborated with the Equatorial Guinean regime as he does not want to spend years rotting in an African jail. Mann has claimed that his collaboration is out of concern for the people of Equatorial Guinea. But the bottom line is that he is a hired killer who has made millions out of being a soldier of fortune in Africa and elsewhere.

In the early nineties he set up Executive Outcomes that made millions protecting oil installations from rebels in Angola. He then set up another company, Sandline International, which shipped arms to Sierra Leone in flagrant contravention of a UN embargo.

As part of his strategy to gain freedom, Mann has named what he called the main backers of the plot, who remain at large. Speaking in court, Mann alleged Ely Calil, the British-based secretive Lebanese tycoon, was known to the coup team as “the cardinal”. “Calil was very much the boss. So nothing could happen without Calil telling me yes or no,” Mann told the trial. Calil, who is reported to have invested more than $700,000 in the coup attempt, has always denied the allegations.

Another person named by Mann is Mark Thatcher, son of Britain’s ex-Prime Minister. Thatcher met Mann when they both lived in South Africa. Thatcher was arrested after the aborted coup, where he struck a plea bargain with the South African authorities, fined $450,000 and given a four-year suspended sentence for “unwittingly” investing in the plot.

A rather unflattering profile of Thatcher in the British press recently said he was “Famous for getting lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally and making his mother cry in public, notorious for shamelessly exploiting her name to further dodgy business ventures, renowned for his rudeness, arrogance and pomposity, and no stranger to controversy, but none of his previous dubious escapades can compare with his reckless involvement in an ill-fated plot to oust the offal-loving president of Equatorial Guinea.”

Thatcher, like Mann, has always tried to downplay his involvement in the coup too. When Thatcher was arrested in South Africa, he said: “I have no involvement in any alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea and I reject totally all suggestions to the contrary.”

Giving evidence last week, Mann contradicted this by saying Thatcher was “not just an investor. He came on board completely and became part of the management team.” Leaked documents suggest Thatcher was involved, something the plotters wanted to keep quiet. One document, that looked at “threats”, was headed by the initials “MT”, which the South African police argue stood for March Thatcher. It said: “If involvement known, rest of us, and project, likely to be screwed as a side- issue to people screwing him. Would particularly add to a campaign, post-event, to remove us.”

Moreover, telephone records obtained by a private detective working for the government of Equatorial Guinea, show Mark Thatcher and Mann speaking “with increasing frequency” in the days before the coup.

Other documents uncovered by the South African security services show the extent to which the coup plotters were going to exploit the resources of Equatorial Guinea. The plotters actually set up a trading company after the coup, called the Bight of Benin Company (BBC). The company would have controlled the country’s economy, its oil reserves, army and police, as a “private fiefdom”, modeled on the British colonial company the East India Company.

The documents suggest that BBC was to have “sole right to have physical or other access” to the new president Moto. It would have been the only company that could “make agreements or contracts” with the new regime.

The plotters also knew about how they would have to spin their coup to the outside world. They planned a massive public relations exercise to avoid “unfavourable scrutiny”. Part of this campaign would have been to trick the outside world that the new regime would be “transparent” over its policies, including on human rights. However this “transparency” campaign was to be followed by one of “disinformation” to convince outsiders that the Americans were behind the coup, and therefore to “back off.”

“It is potentially a very lucrative game,” one document said: “We should expect bad behaviour; disloyalty; rampant individual greed; irrational behaviour (kids in toyshop type); back-stabbing … and similar ungentlemanly activities.”

The truth is that, despite how supporters are trying to spin this story, Mann is no gentleman. He is a soldier of war. Mark Thatcher is no gentleman either; his controversial business career in arms and oil has been linked with scandal. In the early eighties Thatcher was rumoured to have been paid a $2 million commission for the construction of a university in Oman, which had been negotiated by his mother, then Prime Minster. Three years later, he was said to have received $24 million from the biggest arms deal in history, the $80 billion Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia, also signed by his mother.

President Obiang’s government has now issued an international warrant for Thatcher, who the President calls a “dirty player who lives his life getting himself involved in all sorts of dubious deals that are of benefit to himself.” Thatcher remains in hiding in a secure gated resident in South Spain. He is said to be running out of places to hide: South Africa has evicted him, the US would arrest him, France and Switzerland have said he is not welcome.

If Thatcher is arrested, the chances of a fair trial in Equatorial Guinea are as remote as free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. But it is time the world really found out how the son of a British Prime Minister helped finance this dirty plot and his exact involvement.

Maybe Thatcher should volunteer to be tried in neutral country. If convicted though he should not be given any privileged treatment. Neither should Mann when he is sentenced. Both men were reportedly set to make millions from this venture. They both gambled and they lost.

As Mann has said, “You go tiger shooting and you don’t expect the tiger to win.” Well this time the tiger won. They can sit there together with their tails between their legs.

While members of the opposition to President Teodoro Obiang’s regime are detained and tortured in prison merely for being in opposition, international human rights organizations are denied entry to Equatorial Guinea. While some are set free with neither charges nor trial or else pardoned after a lapse of time, subsequently they are fined and their movement restricted to their hometowns. While the supposed leader of a coup d’état, Severo Moto, is tried in absentia, a handful of associates are left to rely exclusively on the mercy of the court, their fate decided by the Chief Justice of the Nation, who, not by accident, presides over the trial (Art. 86 of Equatorial Guinea’s Fundamental Law).

If someone were to bet 100 Euros that this account referred to events taking place in June 2008 they would lose. The events in question took place in 1997, eleven years ago. An Amnesty International Release on Equatorial Guinea (AI INDEX: AFR 24/07/97), published on October 14th 1997 gives a complete account of the events in question.

It seems the long decade since those events has changed nothing. The failed coup has been repeated with the same protagonist, the regime continues imprisoning and torturing, Obiang continues in power and Amnesty International never fails to publish similar reports year in, year out. However a couple of changes have in fact taken place and for the moment one can say that the first of them is for the worse.

This first change is that Obiang’s political acuity has sharpened. However much one dislikes the fact, he is smarter than one might want to admit. He toys with his equals around the world and with his rivals at home. Without counting the high official posts he held during the precious regime of his uncle Francisco Macias, Obiang has been in power for 30 years. In this time, he has made himself immensely rich and has enriched his family. He occupies an accepted place in the international community. He has wiped out the meagre opposition and the only doubts relating to his future stem from his health and his succession, neither of which are completely under his control.

Amnesty International denounced in their 1997 report that the denial of access for international human rights organizations to the country “contradicts the policy of openness in relation to human rights issues publicly promised by President Obiang in February 1997.”

While Obiang’s policy of broken promises has lasted for more than 10 years, his policy on torture is much older. In 1978 Amnesty International regarded it as a systematic practice to the point that in its March Bulletin of that year it defined Equatorial Guinea as “a huge torture camp whose only exit is the cemetery.” A report published in 1990 with the title Tortures in Equatorial Guinea, collected information for the twenty years from 1968 to 1988.

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party government: the democracy of never-too-much dialogue

Obiang only fools people who let themselves be fooled. Pronouncements made from time by Spain’s Foreign Minister Moratinos on “helping, accompanying, offering incentives and motivating a country like Equatorial Guinea to move forward the process of democratization and defence of Human Rights”, once more display the Kingdom of Spain as a dummy State led by the interests of others and in contradiction to the aspirations of its Constitution.

For years Moratinos has travelled to Equatorial Guinea or received Obiang in Spain. Still, his opinion on “advances in the democratization process” is as valuable today as those of the US entertainment magazine Parade which also observes some progress. It rates Obiang thirteenth in the list of the world’s worst dictators after having placed him eleventh in 2007 and tenth in 2006.

The main difference is that the magazine describes Obiang outright as a dictator and does not propose dialogue about it. Meanwhile, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party seems to be waiting for another decade to pass just so as to be completely sure before uttering the word. Maybe for that reason the magazine has a circulation of 42 million while the Minister’s Press releases are not even read by his own advisors. Nothing else explains really the publication of his “somewhat impassioned” opinion on Obiang’s last visit to Spain.

Obiang has got to where he is by administering dose after dose of broken promises wherever necessary, wrapped up in oil contracts. The result has been murder, torture and other serious human rights violations, but still Moratinos gets all impassioned when he and Obiang meet up. It is true that his counterparts in the US receive Obiang as a “good friend” and in China and other countries they greet him with the red carpet, but that does not make Obiang any less a criminal. Rather it turns those hosts of his into aiders, abettors and accomplices of his barbarism.

If Obiang’s declarations no longer fool Foreign Ministers and Presidents, those of Moratinos fool no one either. Who, outside the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, believes that government policy towards Equatorial Guinea is adequate in the light of the last thirty years? Nonetheless, on May 29th this year, shortly after the rigged elections held in Equatorial Guinea, the government again presented in the Congress of Deputies its routine litany: “our only remedy is to continue insisting on a constructive dialogue”.

The opposition: still waiting for news on Nkrumah, Mandela, Lumumba and Biko

The second change has taken place in the political opposition. The leaders of the Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) that held two seats in Equatorial Guinea’s 100-seat parliament — the remainder being taken up by Obiang’s party members — are going through moments of political and personal anguish. Not surprisingly, since they ended up with just one seat, continue to be harassed as usual and have been abandoned by the international community, which prefers oil in the hand to democracy on the wing.

The opposition has shown its desperation and fury via various communiqués from its National Executive over the last month. These offer a mixture of denunciations, laments, meditations after the fact on what happened, vague accusations, unattainable proposals and reflections lacking self-criticism.

The CPDS denounces that “the electoral process of Sunday May 4th 2008 in Equatorial Guinea surpassed all forecasts of the brutality of the fraud prepared by Obiang and his regime, marking a clear regression in the country’s political evolution.”

The CPDS laments the betrayal of the international community, especially Spain and the United States since the elections “were not held in conditions of liberty, transparency and equality as was expected by the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos or as the United States ambassador in the country intended.”

The European Union is not immune from the attacks since the release of funds (more than Euros 10m) intended for Equatorial Guinea assigned to the ninth European Development Fund to carry out projects in areas like human rights and good governance is regarded by the CPDS as “the strongest insult that could be received”.

The CPDS Executive pauses to meditate on “the unhappy history of Equatorial Guinea that repeats itself cyclically” because in 2002 “when Equatorial Guinea most needed the UN, this body decided to withdraw, as if by chance, the Special Representative for Equatorial Guinea, leaving the population defenceless and at the mercy of the arbitrary will of Obiang. Many of the people arbitrarily detained then have only just been pardoned in June.”

Finally, they offer a very negative judgement on the policy of dialogue. They consider that “the rapprochements (by its bilateral and multilateral partners) made towards the regime that governs Equatorial Guinea are made for other reasons, not expressed in public declarations, perhaps possibly the benefits obtained from the situation of a totalitarian and despotic regime, not respectful of people’s rights, reasons which favour the individuals, institutions or countries that make such rapprochements, which unscrupulously damage the legitimate interests of the people of Equatorial Guinea, their right to live in freedom and to benefit from their natural resources.”

Despite admitting their desperate political situation they still “call on the international community, particularly the multilateral and bilateral partners represented in Equatorial Guinea to recognise that their silence at the repression and all the abuses perpetrated by Obiang and his regime on the people of Equatorial Guinea, along with all the arbitrary abuses inflicted on the opposition and on dissidents in the country seem to amount to complicity in the damage the regime thus inflicts on this people. The CPDS would like to see a pronouncement on what happened in this country on May 4th this year, as well as on the post-election harassment that followed.”

What the CPDS describes is correct. It even understates things. It has received the biggest blow in its history not only for having lost one of its two seats at the hands of its enemies but because it has been abandoned by those it considered its friends. But in that case, why go running to them once more?

It does not matter now that what happened was the chronicle of an abandonment foreseeable beforehand and warned of at the time. But what sense does it make to make new appeals that will themselves also be ignored? It hardly makes any difference now to point out that the international community is an accomplice of the regime against the country’s people. But more than anything, it does nothing to lift the population of Equatorial Guinea out of their shameful situation.

The May 2008 elections have confirmed, if any further confirmation was necessary, that the political game played so far with such poor cards by the CPDS against experienced criminals, bought judges and with an audience of observers watching out for their own interests, is over.

It is not the moment for lament or roundabout accusations. If the CPDS is not faithful to the logic of its own analysis of the situation and gets caught up in absurd reproaches and threats that show up its weakness even more, not only will it be finished but, as its own National Executive says of other actors involved, it runs the risk of being an accomplice in Obiang’s game.

The struggle for the rights of Africans in Africa has not been achieved mainly or even most importantly in the sessions of corrupt parliaments or in meetings in offices in Madrid or Washington with diplomats concerned about the people of Equatorial Guinea in words but not in fact. Nor, obviously, has the struggle advanced by repeating over and over again to people who have not the least idea of the suffering of people in Equatorial Guinea that “the CPDS is the only democratic opposition and seeks political change by peaceful means…”

The political strategy faced with murderers, their accomplices and look-outs cannot consist of touring Europe and the United States to complain to people without the least intention of losing their own benefits so as to promote the rights of others. Political action cannot base itself on making speeches day after day in a parliament lacking legitimacy to deputies who only heed to the person that pays them.

To design a new political action it is more useful to consider the pantheon of African leaders. Nkrumah based his political struggle on organizing the masses, which cost him repeated spells in detention. Mandela directed a political transition but not without first insisting on the right to self-defence of the oppressed (what Western politicians call violence) to the Supreme Court in Pretoria in 1964, for which he was condemned to life imprisonment. Lumumba was assassinated by the CIA, the armed wing of the United States government that specialises in murdering popular leaders the world over for their opposition to imperialism. Biko managed successfully to mobilise the inhabitants of South African cities before being assassinated in police custody.

Conclusion: Neither dialogue with Obiang nor political tours by the opposition will bring human rights to Equatorial Guinea

It is told that years ago an old Equatorial Guinean, unhappy at his country’s evolution on which a Spanish person was talking asked, “Hey, this independence stuff, how long does it last?” One has to suppose that the passage of time has given him the answer, although doubtless thousands of Equatorial Guineans are asking the same question now about this democracy stuff.

Democracy does not exist in Equatorial Guinea nor will it under the current dictatorial circumstances prolonged by external help from powerful economic interests in exchange for oil.

Once the political game is exhausted, or what is no more than the trappings of a democratic system, for Equatorial Guineans to be able to see human rights respected, requires a resistance struggle to be carried through against the individuals who violate people’s rights and those who abet them.

In other words, rights are taken, not given. That most likely means dropping certain useless friendships and support, working more in the street and in villages than in Parliament and abandoning the parody of democracy for the drama of popular struggle.

It is essential not to compromise the enduring right of peoples and individuals to a life of liberty, justice and peace via a political slogan to the liking of corrupt leaders like “a peaceful political alternative” — fine for the oppressor, not so great for the oppressed.